A city carbon tax would also be a flexible way of addressing traffic congestion, which has almost hit the saturation point. It already costs $15 or $20 to park your car in some parts of Toronto. Why not charge a similar amount to drive it around?

While the carbon tax will “drive” some reductions in vehicle kilometers traveled, we can’t expect much from a carbon tax or emission pricing in the transport sector. Sure, high fuel prices will change some behavoiur in the transport sector, but experience has shown that folks are simply insensitive to fuel prices, especially in the short term and somewhat in the longer-term. This means that carbon prices need to be complemented with vehicle standards, California style.

In the NRTEE modelling, and indeed in most carbon abatement assessment, the transport sector is the last to respond, and one of the reasons why deep GHG reductions result in exponentially rising abatement cost curves at emission prices above $200. The insensitivity to the transport sector to high emission prices is one reason why international trading looks really good and fuel economy standards even better.

So, while a carbon tax or carbon price is a corner stone of effective climate policy, complementary vehicle fuel standards are a necessity to address our collective addiction to the car….

And if you want to address congestion, well then price congestion directly. And if you want to fund social programs, well keep it to yourself and perhaps lets talk after we implement a economy-wide carbon price, collect revenue, have effective tax shifting and revenue recycling and reduce some emissions. Then maybe lets think about diverting some revenue to other purposes.